The present invention relates to sound-film motion-picture projectors of the type used for dubbing, rerecording or other editing or special-effects work. The above-identified commonly assigned copending patent application discloses a projection system of this type designed to greatly facilitate the work done when, for example, dubbing or rerecording. First, the operator establishes the scene-transition locations on the film where recording-transition effects are to be performed. Such an effect may be an audio fadeover coinciding with an image-fadeover transition, or a simple audio fade-out at the end of a scene, a simple audio fade-in at the start of a scene, or a fade-in, fade-out or fade-over to be effected right in the middle of a scene.
To facilitate such work, that application discloses a system wherein the operator advances the film, either manually or during normal-speed full-light projection; when the start of a scene is being projected the operator presses a store button, and a minicomputer stores the frame count for the scene-start; likewise when the end of the scene is being projected the operator again presses the store button, and the minicomputer stores the frame count for the scene-end. After this scene-start and scene-end frame-count information has been stored and other programming of the system finished, dubbing or rerecording work starts. The operator switches the system over into automatic or semiautomatic operation, and among the things the system then does is to perform a high-spaced rewind to a location ahead of the scene-start, followed by a switchover into forwards transport, and including the increasing and/or decreasing of the recording level pertaining to one or more sources of audio information at the times proper for the desired scene-transition effect, these operations being performed automatically or semiautomatically, e.g., when a certain amount of operator intervention is to be provided for.
With that system, the operator may program the system and then dub on a scene-by-scene basis; i.e., first he stores the scene-start and scene-end frame counts for one scene, whereafter he dubs that scene, and only then begins work on the next scene. Alternatively, the operator may command storage of the scene-start and scene-end frame counts for all the scenes on the whole film, and only thereafter begin to dub the thusly defined scenes, one after another.
Especially when the operator stores the transition-location frame counts for a whole sequence of scenes before doing any recording work upon them, a certain amount of confusion can arise for him, both during the frame-count storing work and thereafter during actual recording work. In particular, the operator must somehow keep track of which scene in such a sequence of scenes he has reached, whether during frame-count storing work or thereafter during recording work. The frame-count indicator of the projector provides the operator with only very raw information, not directly correlatable with individual scenes, and the operator must refer both to the frame-count indicator and to, for example, a jotted-down list of all stored transition-location frame counts and/or, if the recorded images are familiar, must refer additionally to the projected image per se. This can be very distracting and inefficient.